Rehabber’s Rehab

It has been a cold winter here in Chi-town, but things have been warming up quite a bit the past few days.  The snow that has been on the ground since the end of December is finally starting to melt.  The giant, and quite impressive snow fort down the block has melted to a foot high ring.  As a child who grew up in Texas, where on the few occasions it snowed you were happy to be able to gather all of the snow up in the yard into one basketball sized half grass half snow-ball, I was particularly amazed by this 5 foot high fort with foot inch thick walls all the way around.  I am sad to see it go, although the relief I feel at finally having a break from the bitter cold, is tempered by the fact that the snow that is remaining is over a month old, and thus disgustingly dirty.  It has also revealed a ton of trash that has been hidden behind snow banks for the past month, and is now littering the streets.  Our back yard in particular is no exception.

For the past month we had been able to delude ourselves into thinking that it was not that bad.  We had forgotten about all of the construction debri that was hidden underneath.  The yard is now slowly being revealed as things slowly warm up, and all of the garbage is starting to come to light again.  What a mess.

This holiday season was filled with fun and sadness, and between the two, and the house, I am worn out. However, we have started to turn a corner. It had seemed like everything that had happened until now was progressively making my life worse and worse. Everything was dirty all of the time, the dust had spiraled completely out of control. We lost electricity in half of the house, there was no shower, the only toilet was in the stinky make-shirt bathroom in the basement. To top it all off, it was cold. Really, really, cold. all of the insulation had been removed from the back of the house in re-doing the sunroom, and it was making winter in Chicago pretty unbearable.

So we retreated to my mom’s for a month, but now we’re back.  The cabinets in the kitchen and bathroom are in, the floors look awsome, and there is consistent electricity, including overhead lighting in the living room (a rarity in Oak Park), and now, we finally have the refrigerator actually in the kitchen.

This past weekend was spent on a few miscellaneous projects.  We got the the window trim all put back up, in the dining room and main bedroom and it looks great.  The new continuous window sil blends in beautifully with the rest of the original trim.  Matt and Thor also got the refridgerator put into it’s built-in cabinet.  And it works, too.  Probably the biggest task was getting the giant bathroom linen closet cabinet in.  A good 2 hours was spent with Thor and Matt locked in the bathroom as they tried to lift the cabinet in and maneuver it into place with about a 2 in area of wiggle room.  They got it in, and trimmed out.  We just need to finish drywalling in the top area around it.  Meanwhile I worked on stripping the door to the basement in hopes that putting that back up will help keep the house warm.  We will get there.

Surrounded by boxes

We ordered a dresser off the internet in hopes that it would help to ease of organization woes.  Well, my organization woes.  My stuff has been spread everywhere, and Thor has gotten pretty sick of it.  Although he might have put up with it a little longer if he had known what a pain in the butt putting this thing together would be.

The dresser arrived in 4 giant boxes that were left on the side of the house because I don’t think the delivery man felt up to getting them up the stairs.  Thor got them in, and they took up the entire living room.  We opened the first box, and was faced with a huge gallon bag filled with nothing but screws, many many different types of screws, each with its own number and use.  The dresser itself was completely in pieces.  Each drawer had to be put together completely out of 5 boards, even the knobs needed to be put on.

We began trying to follow the instructions, most of the time resorting to examining the tiny sketchy line drawing to interpret which way things needed to be put together and facing.  About 4 hours later, it was time to pu tthe face of the dresser on, and moment of truth… the screw holes didn’t line up with each other.  About now I had had it.  I was exhausted and and my brain powers had already been exhausted.  I definitely wasn’t up to figuring out where we went wrong possibly 12 steps and 500 screws ago.

Putting together the pieces

Thor was off the next day, and when I got home, miracles had happened.  The house was mopped and cleaned, all of the cardboard had disappeared, and the dresser was completely put together and looked great.   I don’t know how he got it to fit together, but he did.

With all the major construction done and the cabinets coming in a week it was time to get our kitchen floors refinished. Under two nasty layers of linoleum lay a roughed up maple floor. Only one person could renew those hardwood floors, our favorite contractor Jerry. Jerry had done great work on our living room floors and the urine damaged spots so we called on him again to rescue the kitchen floors.

Over two days Jerry painstakingly sanded, filled in, puttied and urethaned the kitchen and hallway floors. New replacement maple is a very bright nearly white color compared to the darker honey of old maple from ealier in the century. We had to fill in where the old pantry wall had left gaps in the floor. Jerry’s wood puttying and darkening of the new wood made it the entire floor look pretty similar unless you are looking for the differences. We also had three dark lines from water stains that ran perpendicular to the floor boards that Jerry was able to sand down to the faintest of markings. Any imperfections can be chalked up to the distinguished colorings of an original maple flooring. It looks really great with another buffing and coat of urethane to be done after the cabinets are installed.

Jerry also inspected the damage done by our electrician when they pushed around the couches scarring the living room and dining room floors. He suggested a buffing and extra coat of stain for no charge when he does the last kitchen coat would do the trick.

Jerry and our drywaller Francisco top the list of the professionals we’ve used while our electrician ranks lower because of the slow pace of work and his disregard for our project actually being somebody’s home when he throws furniture around and leaves messes lying around.

Unfortunately the snow in Chicago is usually gray rather than white, just like the blown insulation in our backroom.  Taking down the ceiling in the backroom was something I was dreading because I could see the sixteen inches deep insulation that was in the ceiling from my kitchen view of the horribly sagging back roof.  But it needed to be done and I had the day off in the middle of the week with no car to go anywhere.

So, I put up the plastic barrier, opened all the windows, and donned my mask.  One by one I took down the rows of 1inch furring boards running perpendicular to ceiling rafters.  The Snow began lightly as their is less ceiling where the roof slopes off at the exterior of the back room, but as I worked towards the kitchen, the insulation fell harder until a complete Gray-Out blinded my vision and I stumbled through the three foot deep drifts.

After a lengthy fresh air break, I started picking up the insulation.  After an hour, I felt I had gotten nowhere, but eventually I found the floor again.  In all I filled up forty trash bags of insulation!  Alas there are no pictures of this adventure as Liz had taken the camera to work.